Roy Williams: "We're Not Prepared" For Opener
COVID is casting a shadow over the start of the basketball season, disrupting schedules and cutting short some of the valuable preparation time. That’s particularly problematic for a young UNC team.
"The worst thing about our preparation this year is we’ve got six freshmen in the mix for playing time,” Roy Williams said, “and I’m talking about major playing time. Not having an exhibition. Not having a scrimmage. Not having regular ACC officials in there. We’re going into Wednesday night, and we’re not prepared. We haven’t had any of those things.”
Needless to say, coach Williams is not one who likes sudden changes to the schedule.
“I don’t handle it very well,” he said, “but it’s the world we live in right now. Someone else canceled their first four games, through Dec. 7. There was a football game on Saturday morning cancelled that was supp to be played at 12:00. It’s the world we live in. I don’t like it. I like normalcy. I like a routine, but that’s not what we have right now. You can do everything you can possibly do and still have a slip up. We have to just do everything we possibly can and be prepared to handle everything as well.”
The uncertainty causes stress and also takes away from the limited preparation time, since new protocols for everything from travel to sitting on the bench need to be discussed and walked through.
“You’re concerned about it,“ Williams said. The biggest thing is you spend all time worrying about that, and you’re not ready to get the job done or spending time preparing your team. Doc (Phog) Allen said, ‘If the mailman stopped to kick every dog that barked you’d never get the mail delivered.’ You’ve got to be able to do everything we can and handle new information, then handle the next information and the next information.”
